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This blog will be an account my life working in a Refugee camp in Northern Zambia called Mwange. For the next year, I will be working for Right to Play, a sport and development organization based out of Toronto. What follows will be a life altering experience. Stay tuned....
Sunday, June 12, 2005
May 31st
We were on our way out to the camp when we suddenly heard some sirens behind us. When we looked to our side, we saw a Red Cross vehicle, that normally transports health workers to the camp with a load full of machine gun toting soldiers motioning for us to pull over. My first thought was that we had done something wrong. Who did we hit with our vehicle? What did I do last night? Then we realized that they were sending us back to town as there were apparently problems with the refugees.
Sometimes there are uprisings within the camp to protest food distribution or the treatment of the refugees by the UN - and the first people they will target are aid workers. A couple years ago, a woman with the World Food Program was severely beaten by the refugees who were protesting for more food. They will often throw rocks at vehicles and will try to trap aid workers in the camp until their demands are heard.
Needless to say, we were a little scared and hurried back to Mporokoso to find out what was going on. It was a bad day to forget our radio back at home as the UN would have been trying to warn us of the situation. The radios are our only means of communication and without it, we are totally lost to the outside world. We immediately proceeded to the Ministry of Home Affairs, where we were informed that some Congolese rebel troops had crossed over into the area and had fired some shots. The government was concerned that the rebels might be going into the refugee camp and therefore advised all the workers not to go. We are lucky that we didn’t leave on time today, or we could have been trapped….
